Popping Candies
by infinitelyrichandbeautiful
Summary: or, Hermione Grows Up. She does not doodle Hermione Weasley anywhere, but she thinks about how her dark skin looked on Krum and wonders about how absolutely pale Ron would be underneath his clothes.


It starts with Lockhart.

She's only ever had one crush before: Nathan, back home, when she was about nine, and she'd tried to whip up a love potion made from soap, blackberry currant juice, and salt water. Her babysitter had found it and thrown it out before she could give it to him.

But the way she feels for Lockhart is… different. She can't look at him for too long, because his white teeth and gold hair make it seem like she's looking into the sun. She reads his books and presses her face to the crook of the inside binding, inhaling slowly. She writes him poems, about how he smells like cologne and about his wide, unbearable smile. She sets them on fire before anyone can find them; she draws hearts around his lessons in her timetable, and when Ron and Harry see it she lights that on fire, too. In the dorms, Parvati and Lavender talk about how beautiful he is and her chest constricts, and she feels like shouting at them that he isn't theirs, he's _hers_.

"You _loooove_ him," Ron grins, when she dawdles after Lockhart's class. "You want to have _sex_ with him."

She stiffens; snaps, "I don't," and flounces off.

The truth is, she doesn't. It isn't like that. She's written _Hermione Lockhart_ over and over in invisible ink in the inside of _Voyages with Vampires_ but she can't even imagine kissing him. The thought makes her cheeks go red.

It's all very demure. She is thirteen.

* * *

She can _feel_ Krum's gaze burning into her back. Her hand twitches around her quill. She can hear giggling from his fangirls, behind the bookshelves. She shifts in her seat and tries to concentrate but it's no use, she knows he's looking and honestly, she's _sick_ of it. He's been staring at her for ages, now, and it makes her feel self-conscious because nobody's ever looked at her that long before, or that intensely, or quietly.

She's so focused on him that she can almost hear him blink from one table away. Her mouth tightens; she snaps her book shut and straightens in her chair, swiveling around to look directly at him.

His eyes go wide, which makes her angry for some reason. "Do you _mind_?" she hisses. The fangirls inhale, like some sort of Greek chorus.

He looks bashfully down at the table. "Sorry," he says, gruffly. Now she feels bad. Great.

She turns back around, and then, a moment later, hears him approach. "I look at you," he says, his broken English dancing atop his Bulgarian accent, "because you are…" His mouth hinges on the word. "Pretty."

Her face flushes.

"Oh!" she says, startled. "Well…"

He holds out his hand. "Viktor—"

"Krum! I know! I mean…" She tries to ignore the girls. "I'm Hermione. Granger."

His brow furrows. "Herminny," he repeats, slowly, and then smiles. Though he's older than her, and though he's _famous_ , there's something… child-like about him. She thinks of Ron's figurine, slouched in the palm of his hand at the World Cup. They got the eyebrows wrong. In reality, his are much thicker.

He asks her to the Ball, and she can't stop smiling into her pillow that night.

* * *

Viktor takes her hand in his and they walk through the grounds after the Ball. All around them, couples are hiding in bushes. The thought makes Hermione's heart skip; she's not quite sure whether she wants to join them.

He holds her hand up to his lips and kisses her fingers; her skin is so much darker than his. Sepia on eggshell. Her small breasts press gently against the silk of her dress, but he doesn't look down. His eyes do not leave hers. It's both unnerving and a little bit sweet. "I vould like," he says, "to kiss you." His voice is like gravel. His mouth tastes like wine. Ron had called him _the enemy_ , but his touch is surprisingly gentle; on the slight of her waist, on the nape of her neck, the back of his hand brushing against her hair that's already starting to frizz back up.

She keeps her eyes open, and watches the long curtains of his eyelashes brush his cheek.

* * *

"I just think he's too old for you!"

"Oh, do you?"

"Yes! He's eighteen! He's an adult! It's—"

"What a load of rubbish— _too old_ —"

"Well he is! It's statutory rape or something, isn't it?"

"I can take care of myself, _Ron_!"

"Can you?"

"I don't need you poking your nose into something that is _not your business_ —"

"What do you mean, _not my business?_ "

"Well, it isn't, is it?"

"You're my _friend—_ I'm just looking out for you—"

"Are you? Really?"

"Yes! C'mon, Hermione, you don't really think he likes you, do you?"

" _What_?"

"Well—"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, I just—"

"You don't think I'm good enough for him, is that it? Because he's _famous_ , or something? Because he can do stupid wonky faints?"

"Wonky faints? _Wonky faints_?"

"Oh, shut up! If you must know, Viktor—"

"Yeah? What did Vicky say?"

" _Don't_ —"

"I will—"

"Well, if you don't like it, you know what the solution is, don't you?"

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"Next time there's a ball, as me before someone else does, and not as a last resort!"

* * *

Viktor kisses her once more, after pulling her out of the lake. He tucks her wet hair behind her ear and touches her face gently and this time, he tastes like salt water.

She tries to close her eyes this time, but all she can see on the inside of her eyelids is Ron, his mouth hanging open, staring at her furiously, so she opens them and stares at the sky.

* * *

"They can't expel him," Hermione whispers to Ron in the darkness. "They can't."

"Well, they can," he says, grimly. "Fudge has gone mad."

She can feel his leg touching her own, under the dusty covers of his bed in Grimmauld Place.

"Do you believe him?"

He says the words so quietly she thinks she'd imagined them.

"Yes," she answers, almost immediately. Then: "I don't know."

There is silence. "I'm worried about him," Ron admits. She looks at him, and, even in the almost-black, she can see the glitter of his eyes. Almost unconsciously, she shifts beside him. "Me, too."

He bites his lip. "I mean, you saw him at the end of term. He was… You remember."

She does. She remembers the messier-than-usual ruff of his hair; his skin so pale she thought she could see through it; the shadow that had started to line his jaw; having to force him to eat; Ron telling her that he wasn't sleeping, and that when he did, it was only for, at most, two hours at time. The heavy look in his green eyes.

"Yes."

"I'm scared he's going to…"

She remembers Ron, shaking, confiding in her that he'd barely stopped Harry from slicing his own wrists open; feeling her own heart break loudly inside her ribcage.

Hermione squeezes his hand sharply. "I know." That was the first time she'd ever seen Ron cry.

Phineas Nigellus coughs loudly from across the room.

She does not pull her hand away.

* * *

He likes his toast burnt. He goes out of his way to step on the crunchy leaves that carpet the ground in autumn. He does not dot his _i'_ s. His hands are big and clumsy; his elbows are bony; his eyelashes are so ginger-light they're almost invisible. He loves bad puns and lewd jokes and says her name with a specific type of cadence nobody else has quite achieved.

It's not like Lockhart. She has to stop herself from looking at Ron. She watches him from the corner of her eye and feels herself inhale when he does. She does not doodle _Hermione Weasley_ anywhere, but she thinks about how her dark skin looked on Krum and wonders about how absolutely pale Ron would be underneath his clothes.

* * *

Viktor invites her to Bulgaria again.

She says that she can't; that there's a war.

Umbridge is tightening her hold on the castle.

Cho kisses Harry.

Arthur Weasley is carted off to St. Mungo's, spurting blood like the mouth of a fountain.

The D.A. are caught.

Dumbledore leaves.

Azkaban breaks open.

Her place is here.

* * *

She hears Lavender and Parvati talking about Ron one night, in the dormitory. They think she's asleep.

"He's not _conventionally_ attractive," Lavender says, "but he's. You know. There's _something_ about him."

Hermione closes her eyes and brings her knees up to her chest.

"Doesn't he have a thing with Granger?" Parvati asks.

"Oh, that'll never happen," Lavender says, dismissively. "They waited too long", but Ron's hand brushes against hers in Potions and his eyes watch the curve of her thighs when she wears her pyjamas. Harry catches her eye when Ron mentions Viktor, and Hermione tries not to giggle.

* * *

Ron kisses Lavender at the after-match party.

She sits with Harry up on the Astronomy Tower and he brings her firewhisky. She presses her face into the crook of his neck and feels his pulse thump, dully.

"He'll come around," he says. She feels very hot. "I know he loves you."

"Don't say that," she mumbles. Harry holds her tighter. She tries to take another sip of her firewhisky but the goblet is empty.

"This place is so stupid," she says. "There's ghosts and paintings that move and criminals that turn into dogs but turn out not to be criminals"—Harry flinches—"but there's no paper plates. No Styrofoam cups. We have to drink out of goblets decorated with rubies and gold leaf. These things are _heavy_."

He chuckles. "You're drunk."

"And in the morning, I shall be sober," she whispers, "and you will still be ugly."

"Winston Churchill, right?"

"Mhmm." She drops the goblet, and it rolls across the floor. She slips her hand around his waist. "I'm surprised you know."

"I'm not as stupid as you might think."

"No." His fingers have started to draw light circles on her skin. She thinks of Ron and Lavender, and imagines them in that empty classroom downstairs. Kissing. Fucking.

"Stop it," Harry says quietly, like she's thinking too loudly.

"Like you haven't thought about Ginny and Dean." Perhaps that was a bit too harsh. He stiffens. His fingers drop from her back. "I'm sorry."

He's silent for a moment. She aches for him to touch her again. "How'd you know?"

She shrugs. "I'm not as stupid as you might think."

He grimaces.

* * *

Cormac manages to corner her when she tries to escape from Slughorn's party. "Ah, there you are," he says, pompously. "I thought I'd lost you."

"Yes, well," she mutters. She tries to sidestep him but he doesn't let her.

'Where are you going? The party's just beginning!"

"I'm tired," she says. "I think I'll just go to bed, thanks."

He's so much taller than her.

"I'm sure I can keep you awake for just a few more hours."

She's against the wall now. His face is very close to hers.

"Honestly—"

"Come on, Granger," he says. "Loosen up a bit."

McGonagall trips over him the next morning on her way downstairs, sprawled on the floor with no bones in his arms, his legs locked together, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

* * *

She sits beside Ron's bed in the hospital wing. Harry's in the chair next to her; he reaches over and grabs her hand. She feels like crying.

She didn't even buy him a birthday present, she was so angry with him.

"He'll be okay," she whispers. She doesn't know if she's telling Harry or Madam Pomfrey, or herself, or even Ron. _You'll be okay._

Harry nods. Sweat sticks his hair to his forehead. "I want to close his eyes," he says to her. "But then it'll seem like he's dead."

In reply, she says, "I'm so glad you didn't kill yourself."

His breath hitches, and he pulls his hand away from her.

After a while, he mumbles: "thanks, I guess."

 _You'll be okay._

 _Please wake up._

* * *

He does.

Lavender—

—is forgotten.

* * *

She arrives at the Burrow on the first Sunday of June that summer. They are set to rescue Harry just before his birthday.

It feels like a deadline.

Ron touches her all the time. His foot knocks against hers under the kitchen table. Their shoulders bump on the couch. His fingers drift across her own when he hands her the tea mug. She sleeps in his Chudley Canons bed almost every night: her head on his chest, his fingers curling coolly around her waist. In her dreams, she drags her hand down the planes of his stomach, following the line of hair that snakes into his boxers, and dips her fingers in the band of his pyjama trousers. He shivers and flips her over, prising her legs open un-gently with his hands, moving her knickers aside and pushing his hips into her over and over and over and over.

She imagines he has the same sort of dreams, become she wakes up with a firm pressure against her stomach. She pretends not to notice.

Then Harry comes, and she sleeps downstairs with Ginny, and they don't dare even look at each other.

* * *

Viktor shows up at the wedding.

He leads her outside of the marquee. She forgot how hooked his nose was; how ungainly he looked.

"I loved you," he said. She shakes her head.

"You didn't."

He considers it, and then laughs, softly. "Maybe you are right."

His new beard scratches against her face as he kisses her one last time.

* * *

That night at Grimmauld Place, she and Ron stare at each other in the dark.

"Do you ever wish that we hadn't agreed to this?" he asks her. _Do you believe him?_ he'd asked, years ago. This feels like a reprise.

"No," she lies.

"I do." He rolls over on his back. She watches the rise and fall of his chest. "I wish for a lot of things."

"Like what?"

He doesn't say anything, but his hand reaches for her own. The rough skin of his palm feels familiar, now. His sleeve is rolled up and she can see the scars the brains left on the inside of his arm, in fifth year; still raised and only just now turning white.

* * *

Months later, in the tent, when Harry has gone off to find food, she tries to slip back into his bed. He grabs her wrist and stares at her, his eyes hard.

"Stop it," he says, lowly.

This is the first time either of them has verbally acknowledged whatever is going on.

The chain of the locket glints heavily against his throat.

"What?" she whispers.

"Whatever game we're playing." He lets her go, and pulls the covers up, turning away from her to face the canvas wall. "It's fucking useless."

Hermione nearly chokes on her own breath. She waits, thinking he might say something more, but he doesn't, and she slinks back to her own bed, under her own covers, and stares at her own hands folded atop one another against the pillow.

* * *

He leaves.

* * *

It's after Godric's Hollow, after Nagini, and the locket rests safely in her bag. She stole a bottle of Muggle wine from a nearby village under the invisibility cloak. It lies empty next to her and Harry, sprawled close to each other on the floor of the tent.

"He goes to the toilet, you know," Harry says, looking at her.

"What? Who?"

"V—you know. _He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named_. He goes to the toilet."

Hermione grins drunkenly. "I never thought about that."

"Really? I do."

She snorts. "You think about him on the toilet often, then?"

He swats at her. "No. It's just… he does normal things, you know? He brushes his teeth. He wipes his arse after he shits. He has a wank."

"He's half-blood," Hermione muses. "He probably has a favourite cartoon, or season of _SNL._ "

He laughs. "Yeah. It's kind of… I dunno. Comforting."

"Yes," she agrees. "It is." His eyes slip closed for a moment. "You're drunk."

His lips twitch. "And in the morning, I will be sober, and you will still be ugly." A pause. "Ginny came up with it. That joke about—him."

Hermione doesn't say anything. Thinking about Ginny makes her think about _(Ron),_ and thinking about him physically hurts.

"Fuck, I miss her," Harry says, sounding pained. "I love her. I love her so much." He moves closer to her. "I love you, too," he murmurs, breath washing across her face. "And I love Ron."

She flinches. "Sorry," he says, absently. She shakes her head.

"It's alright."

"No," Harry says. "He left us."

"I'm aware," she says, suddenly terse. He just looks at her.

 _Stop it._

She can see her reflection in his glasses; she hardly recognizes herself. Her hair is bushier than ever, the twin branches of her collarbone just out, harshly; she's much too thin. There is exhaustion trapped in the line of her mouth, under her eyes.

 _Whatever game we're playing. It's fucking useless_.

Harry's mouth misses hers and lands on her chin instead. He makes to pull away but she doesn't let him; she grabs him and bites his bottom lip and she feels him exhale into her mouth, his hands pulling her toward him, dragging at her clothes. Their teeth bump. He sucks on her tongue, and her hands slide underneath his jumper, raking her nails parallel to his spine; he moans quietly, so quietly.

It is wrong. It is furiously, violently, treacherously wrong.

Neither one of them care.

"Have you ever?" he asks quietly, as she nudges his jumper over his head.

"No." She pauses. "Have you?"

He is silent, which she takes to mean yes.

When Harry ducks his head between her thighs, it feels uncomfortable but not unwelcome. When he pushes inside her, she has to swallow her gasp. He moves slowly, and then quicker; she grips him tightly.

"Don't think about him," he hisses.

She digs her nails into his skin. "Only if _you_ don't think about _her_ ," Hermione retorts, and he thrusts into her so forcefully it hurts.

* * *

He comes back.

She pulls Harry aside; is about to say _don't tell him, not ever_ when he raises his palm. "I know," he says. "I know."

* * *

She's half-asleep one night when she feels her mattress creak.

"Hermione?" Ron whispers. He leans over her; she doesn't look at him but whispers, "what?"

He backs away slightly. "I'm sorry."

She scowls.

"Can I—?"

A bite of her lip and he slides in next to her. He doesn't touch her, not even close, and she listens to his breathing as it evens out.

 _Don't fucking leave me ever again,_ she screams, silently.

* * *

malfoy manor—

her bones are screaming, her underwear is wet with urine and it sticks to her flesh there is blood everywhere she catches dracos eyes before greyback looms over her and he looks away greybacks breath smells like death she is going to die she knows it she knows it and she hears ron screaming below and greyback forces his hand to her breast and claws at it and she screams she screams and bellatrix casts another crucio and she writhes underneath the wolfs weight _please please please_ shut up girly _please please please_ his nails dig into her down to her cunt and he yanks at her pubic hair and laughs the mudbloods pissed herself _please please please_ she thinks of ron of ron of ron that's quite enough greyback snaps narcissa shut up cissy draco is bone white his fists are clenched _please please please_ it isn't the real sword its just a copy and shes thrown to the side of the room and shes screaming nobodys touching her anymore but shes still screaming and—

* * *

When she wakes, she's lying in a soft bed. Her body aches; her heartbeat feels off.

 _I'm still in Malfoy Manor_ , she thinks, wildly. _I've been driven mad, I'm in Malfoy Manor_ , _I've been driven mad, I'm in Malfoy Manor_ —

After a while, she closes her eyes again. Delirium, she thinks, is not so bad. She doesn't feel the stickiness between her legs anymore; some of the pain has begun to lessen. She looks down at herself and notices she is in new clothes; in soft trousers that are far too big for her.

She hears waves outside the window. There's a bookshelf—of course there would be. If this is a room of her own creation, of course there's a bookshelf.

The door creaks open.

It's him.

"You're awake" he says, weakly, staggering over to her. His eyes are red, wet. He collapses on his knees. "Hermione…"

She smiles at him. His breath trembles. "How—how are you feeling?"

She doesn't say anything. The sun is rising; the light drops over his face, liming the hollow of his cheeks, the curve of his cupid's bow, the sharp clip of his jawline, in soft morning-gold.

Suddenly, she remembers that the mind cannot conjure up unfamiliar images.

If she has never seen this room before—

"Where am I?"

"Shell Cottage," he says. "Bill and Fleur's."

She nods, slowly. "Bill and Fleur's," she repeats. This makes sense.

She reaches out to touch his face; he catches her hand and curls her fingers in his. "You're real."

"Yeah," he breathes. He leans forward, and his eyes drop to her mouth; her heart retches, but he presses his lips to her cheek instead.

* * *

"Hang on a moment! We've forgotten someone!"

"Who?"

"The house-elves, they'll all be down in the kitchen, won't they?"

"You mean we ought to get them fighting?"

"No, I mean we should tell them to get out. We don't want any more Dobbys, do we? We can't order them to die for us—"

* * *

In the Gryffindor boys dormitories, Ron pulls the hangings around them.

She kisses him for the second time and thinks, _finally_.


End file.
